Radical Ideas: The Origins and Evolution of Visible-Light Photocatalysis

Abstract: Chemistry stands at the threshold of a new era, where light itself becomes a central tool for building the molecules that shape our world. Photocatalysis has rapidly emerged as a transformative technology, offering not only cleaner and more sustainable processes but also entirely new ways of thinking about reactivity. By harnessing the fleeting power of organic free radicals, we can design practical, efficient strategies that expand the synthetic imagination and open access to molecules once considered out of reach. In this lecture, I will highlight the development of photocatalytic methods that merge mechanistic insight with synthetic utility and application to pharmaceutical synthesis. These innovations directly informed the design of a nanoliter-scale high-throughput discovery platform, enabling rapid evaluation of reactivity and mechanistic hypotheses across vast chemical space. This integration of methods development with automated experimentation compresses the discovery cycle and accelerates the translation of new photochemical concepts into broadly useful synthetic tools. Together, these advances exemplify how photocatalysis, coupled with high-throughput experimentation, is redefining the pace and scope of modern chemical synthesis.

Bio: Corey was born in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo in 1998. He completed graduate studies under the direction of Professor Peter Wipf at the University of Pittsburgh before joining the lab of Professor Erick M. Carreira at ETH Zürich. In September 2007, he joined the Department of Chemistry at Boston University as an Assistant Professor where he served until June 2013. In July 2013, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan as Associate Professor of Chemistry, and in September 2015, was promoted to full Professor. In June, 2024, Corey was appointed a the University of British Columbia as the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Innovative Synthetic Methods for Translational Chemistry with appointments in Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He also co-leads a new synthesis laboratory at the BC Cancer Research Center with Professor Corinna Schindler.

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to welcome Professor Corey Stephenson from the University of British Columbia as a guest speaker for this LGC-TRC Lectureship. This seminar, hosted by Sophie Rousseaux, will take place in a hybrid format, allowing for both in-person and online attendance.

If you are a student at UTM and UTSC and would be interested in attending this colloquium in person (travel expenses covered) and meeting our invited speaker for a talk over lunch, please send your request to chem.reception@utoronto.ca.

All are encouraged to attend!

Zoom Link: https://uoft.me/Stephenson2026
Meeting ID: 876 4409 4555
Passcode: Colloq2526